Gregory's ServerYou know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction.
I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.
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181 comments
@LJ w @Leefellerguy a book I recommended? Or one I wrote? Either way, happy you found your way back to stories!    @AuthorJMac Companies just want to make money and not make our lives easier. @Uddelhexe @AuthorJMac Yeah and on top of that make us work more, take the profit and our labor. We are fucked up the backside.  @Uddelhexe @AuthorJMac Absolutely. But that's the same with every business, whether they admit it or not. Almost nobody goes to work because it's fun or helpful, they go because there's money in it. The "labo(u)r-saving" devices of seventy years ago were invented to free citizens to get out and do stuff they hated with people they didn't like for bosses they despised so that folk they never met could have unearned incomes. AI's no different. @wibble @Uddelhexe But it is. It's taking away fun and fun out of work as well. @AuthorJMac @Uddelhexe I'm sure you must be right, but I'm not sure I see it. As I understand it, AI's good at churning out boiler-plate prose and images (likely plagiarised and probably wrong) and spotting anomalies in account-books or X-rays, but none of that sounds much like fun. The risk, as I see it, is managers will assume AI will boost productivity, and give workers twice the "fun" in half the time, to make them four times as profitable. But that's a tale as old as time-and-motion men. @AuthorJMac Yep, give me an AI that verifies images are real, not an AI that creates false images.  @AuthorJMac I wonder if it would be different with today's tech.  @MayInToronto @tkinias @MayInToronto I'm not surprised. It can even get the folds of fabric right when it's generating it digitally. @AuthorJMac @crcollins @AuthorJMac @Uncleharvey There are central vaccuum systems that do this and I want one. @AuthorJMac The problem is, AI wasn't made for you and me -- people with existing artistic interests. It's made for business dudes, sales bros, and programmers: people who envy the satisfactions of art, and have created a tool to give them the illusion of creativity without the hit to their efficiency or the years of practice.  I would not call any user of โAIโ a programmer. If you know what you're doing, you don't need it; it's useless to you. If you care about the quality of your work, it's actively harmful to your efforts, and you want it as far away from your project as possible. My point wasn't to say that people who use AI are programmers -- it's that, by and large, the people using and enthusing endlessly about Generative AI, including business types and computer science types, aren't creative people. As you say -- creative people don't need it. I'm just adding that uncreative people use it as an ersatz replacement for real creativity.  @mighty_orbot And yet, I can't count on laundry and dishes being done by themselves with minimal input from me. @AuthorJMac Are you saying you want AI that will figure out when the laundry or dishes need to be done, and then pick up the dirty items and clean them for you? (Yes, I realize Iโm belaboring the joke at this point.) @mighty_orbot Yeah, ever since I moved out of my parents' home, I have to do it all by myself (*gasps*), so clearly I'd prefer shortcuts. ;) @AuthorJMac Sorry, itโs just that my parents are old enough to remember when cleaning machines didnโt exist, and doing the laundry was an all-morning chore of hand-washing and wringing and hanging outdoors. Washing dishes took an hour and two people. The machines we have now are HUGE time and labor savers. Once you throw in a fridge-freezer so you only need to buy food once a week, theyโre the whole reason you now have time for art and writing at all. @mighty_orbot Yes, I remember those times too (back in communist Poland, a washing machine was a rare commodity). I don't take them for granted, and I don't argue that the machines are not huge time savers. I'm just pointing out that some people (myself in particular) would prefer it if AI was aiming at taking away the mundane chores in general not replacing things that allow us to be creative, productive, and express ourselves. @AuthorJMac I just think itโs kind of cool that the machine-driven labor-saving future weโve been imagining since โThe Jetsonsโ is already here, and I know my autistic ass is driving the joke into the ground at this point, so Iโll just leave it at that. @mighty_orbot No worries. Did laborers' workloads not go up in response to cleaning machines freeing up their time? Any means of saving labor usually only results in your boss heaping more labor on you, unless you've got a strong labor union with which to stop him. @argv_minus_one No, because the laborers employed by bosses werenโt the same family members as the people who did the washing and cleaning. Stay on topic; nobodyโs talking about unions here. @AuthorJMac I am not advocating for AI writing or art, but the ability for AI to make it is kind of a stepping stone on the way to a full AI robot that will do your laundry and dishes. We're seeimg very competent ai-powered machines being built that are powered off of things like OpenAI. Did they have to capitalize on writing and art to get there? Probably not, but imo it did make it faster. The unfortunate part is we have to try so hard to protect our work while we transition past this part. @MichaelsMind My worry is that the price we pay now (art and writing compromised etc.) isn't going to lead us to any brighter future, because why money-hungry people would go there if they can get all the money now and easier? @AuthorJMac And you should hold those doubts close you're heart as we make sure our spaces are protected. Corporations will fund the future, but they'll consume it unless we keep them as honest and ethical as we can. I don't think we have much of a choice in the matter either. @AuthorJMac I fully agree. The challenge is that there is a correct way to do stuff like laundry and dishes, with material consequences if AI gets it wrong, so not an easy initial use case for new technology that is still kinda random. The element of chance has long been welcome in creative work, sometimes embraced and celebrated. @colby It's a different creative "element of chance" though than a glitch in the algorithm that can count fingers or doesn't know how fabric folds. @AuthorJMac It won't be long before you will have an AI operated robot to do those things. Love your train of thought!!  @AuthorJMac If it does the laundry and dishes in the same half-assed way it tries to do art and writing, I probably don't want it doing that, either. @AuthorJMac I just asked AI, and it informed me that dishwashers, as well as washers and dryers exist. @anakin78z Once they can load and unload themselves, we can talk. Otherwise, I'm still doing dishes and laundry. @AuthorJMac @AuthorJMac You asked for dishwashing and laundry to be automated. People did. Now you're saying 'not like that'. People are automating art & writing. But it doesn't replace the whole process. The idea that AI replaces every part of the process is fully false. So your analogy doesn't work. If you look at any production out there actually using AI, they take weeks, months, etc. Why? Because it's just another tool in a process. If you want tools to free up your time, they probably can already. I have to do far more than merely loading and unloading a dishwasher. I also have to scrape off food debris by hand, and get everything into a basically-clean state, or else it'll still be dirty when it comes out of the dishwasher. That's the better part of an hour's worth of work, per day, sometimes twice a day, for a family of two. I'm under the impression there are some dishwashers that work better than this, but that's a luxury I can't afford. @argv_minus_one @AuthorJMac Holy crap an hour of work for a family of two. I feel bad for you, I really do. The dishwashing process in my very large family is as follows: We pre-clean everything by hand or the crumbs clog the washer. Dishwasher runs 2-3 times at least. Then it needs to be sorted, dried, and put away. We cook every day. The many big bowls and pots used for cooking, and containers of left-overs just emptied do not fit into the dishwasher in an efficient manner and must be hand washed and hand dried. Theyโre split between several rooms. Pls automate. @astroPug @AuthorJMac the idea that AI removes all work is false. It's part of a process, just as doing your dishes in a dishwasher is part of a process. Reading your post, I think your process has lots of room for improvement, but it's not going to be fully automated. @AuthorJMac Joanna I have glaucoma and have trouble reading hard printed books. Will give it a try, if I can use is on my pad.  Nobody will make money from cleaning your dishes. People can make money from making and selling art.  @AuthorJMac problem is, the direction AI is pushed to is the direction of the work the techbros never could do but always wanted to pretend they were able to do, not the one they never had to do nor cared to do. We should force every person in the AI business to do chores until an AI able to do it is developed and made accessible to all. @AuthorJMac Well said. The phrase "artificial intelligence" is actually a huge oxymoron, specifically from a spiritual perspective, where inspiration informs creativity. @AuthorJMac yeah but it turns out that dishes and laundry are hard problems to automate (based on what I've seen of "AI" output I'd suggest writing and art are hard problems to automate, but what would I know).  It's like the bait and switch of higher productivity. I know Keynes wanted a better world, where he imagined productivity would lead to 15 hr weeks with ample leisure and money to engage in life, but like most economists, he was missing a solid grasp of history and human nature. Mainstream economics has at best a tenuous grasp of the real and economic world See also: โInflation is down! The economy is doing great!โ โUS economists and politicians, completely detached from reality The metrics gathered got re-defined a few times. The kind of data collected needs serious revision in some areas. That's a hell of an understatement. We've got *store managers* sleeping in cars these days. It's a full-on stagflation crisisโwages down, layoffs widespread, cost of living through the roofโand no one's admitting it. Employment stats say if you work 1 hr a week, that's "employed". "The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994." https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts Yep. Getting paid poverty wages also, perversely, counts as โemployedโ. If there were a hypothetical unemployment figure that only counts Boomer-era blue-collar wages, that hypothetical unemployment rate would be 90+%. By โBoomer-era blue-collar wagesโ I mean enough to pay for a house, a car, the equivalent of a pension contribution, and the living expenses of a family of four, including food, health care, home goods, clothing, and school supplies. Why the hell people aren't angrily demanding that stolen prosperity be restored to us, I cannot fathom. Absolutely mind-blowing that all that has been taken from us, and people just shrug their shoulders. We all take signals from our surroundings. Media generally doesn't help and there is a certain loss of RL social cohesion. I think the labor movement will change this over time, but the situation is dire right now.  @AuthorJMac Itโll get there. Plus, some of us are already making use of it to handle mundane daily jobs. @AuthorJMac thing is companies are making AI models for doing things replacing which fetch them the most money. Replacing artists, writers, programmers (among others) is much more lucrative than replacing a mundane task like washing dishes.    @AuthorJMac turns out that art and writing were the easy jobs and we should have been paying maid and janitors more all this time. @AuthorJMac  @AuthorJMac was so proud of my AI powered python script to go thru the terabytes of anonymous family jpgs giving them sensible names and metadata on the off chance we might like to look at th... HOW DARE... Since this post is getting a lot of attention, I wanted to add that I have some books out, if you fancy fantasy genre.  @AuthorJMac yep, because all existing LLMs (there is no "AI" outside of marketing) were developed and evolved in the context of competitive capitalism and born from unethical IP-resource extraction. Other LLMs could in theory exist, with ethically sourced training sets, non capitalistic directives and healthier uses, but right now they don't.  @AuthorJMac I quit I.T. so that I could start a new writing career. I learned this week that a substantial part of my copywriting job will now be programming a computer through a prompt to do the writing that I used to do last week. @therieau That one meme with a burning building and a dog sitting inside comes to mine.  @AuthorJMac It's like Google Search giving you paid ad's instead of real search results. @AuthorJMac We could do so much cool stuff with AI, but instead we're using it to make a buck. I want AI to call my friends and family when I pronounce their name correctly. #WithAltText  @AuthorJMac future where AGI machines are dying because they cant do basic chores while humans dine with clean utensils  @AuthorJMac   @AuthorJMac I always say I want a robot valet. Something to keep the apartment clean and to bring me tea. @AuthorJMac Microsoft pushed some sort of AI assistant on my computer in the last update. I went looking for directions for nuking it. I don't want it. I didn't ask for it. I didn't give permission for it to be installed. I wanted to remove it. Many people are asking the same question online. And in every case. there's a flood of answers along the lines of "get used to it; it's the future" and "it's good for you, stop complaining" and so on. Those are not the correct answers. @W6KME Exactly. Also, when AI finally takes over the world, we're both going to be nuked for this conversation. ;) @AuthorJMac AI won't give us more (free) time, it will just change the work we do and how we do it. @AuthorJMac @roelgroeneveld โAI should be doing tedious tasks for creative people, instead itโs doing creative tasks for tedious peopleโ.   @AuthorJMac Those behind the LLM schemes seem to have an incredible contempt for creatives, would explain why they geared their black boxes to removing human creatives from the equation if their silicon gods were able to do that instead. @AuthorJMac or AI doing art and writing instead of us, so we must do laundry and dishes for people who own the AI  @AuthorJMac The trouble with what you want is that if your laundry is crumpled, stained and discolored, into your closet, or your dishes broken instead of washed, it satisfies no one. But if a word generator spews nonsense, there's always someone who will think it's great. The "untrained labor" is too easy to see errors in. @AuthorJMac @bekz ๐ As Iโve said before: Iโm not concerned as much about being replaced as I am about being displaced. Which is solidly rooted in my desire for AI to handle the tedium so I can handle the creativity, not the other way around! @AuthorJMac theyโre working on it: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/22/1130552239/robot-folding-laundry Itโs harder to make a laundry robot than a large language model though, because mechanical motions are involved, not just easily processed data streams like text, images, or audio/video.  @AuthorJMac As much as I'm not a fan of LLMs, the neural net stuff, while not necessarily being great either given its training requirements...did make me think of one really potentially useful use case - sorting recycling. Instead of 3-5 different recycling boxes based on what is being recycled, put it all into one, and let a neutral net trained bot pick out each piece one-by-one, look at what it says in the number in the recycling logo, and sort it from there - at the recycling plant. @AuthorJMac I promise, we are working on this as hard as we can. It's really quite difficult. @AuthorJMac Yes, but current AI is made by tech bros who are sad because they canโt write or paint.   @AuthorJMac My job has gotten harder. @AuthorJMac Been saying this for ages. Technology is supposed to do the things we can't do, don't enjoy, or that aren't safe for us to do, leaving us with more time to do the other things. It's supposed to improve our lives. But as always, capitalism has other ideas. Big companies would love nothing more than to replace artists with AI. AI doesn't get paid, after all. Money doesn't care if life is listless. @AuthorJMac I want a new Command & Conquer. Letโs see what this AI is capable of in strategy games  @AuthorJMac you can still do that. A lot of "art" is not quality labor you imagine it to be. I remember when robo-calls were just a pre-recorded message. Now robo-calls are interactive. So AI is being used to waste my time as a tele marketing campaign.  @AuthorJMac agreed...although to be fair I wouldn't wish my laundry on anything 'cept the washing machine which I am fairly sure is not sentient.  @AuthorJMac This is not for you, it's for the bosses. People who can't art and writing, but don't want to pay humans to do it. They already have a cheap maid for laundry and dishes.  @AuthorJMac I wonder what that would best look like. Like the robot maid in The Jetsons? Or just standalone laundry and dishwashing appliances with a wide array of sensors to tell what they've been loaded with, and smarts to know how to clean different kinds of stains and materials? Do you really want autonomous robotics everywhere in your home life, or just smarter stationary appliances? Understand but respectfully disagree. The biggest actual problem #1 is its tremendous waste of resources, AKA energy. AI will accelerate the #climatecrisis significantly and as a result cause deaths, diseases and destruction. @AuthorJMac I agree, but we don't need AI for lots of those use cases, see washing machine/dishwashers. We've had the capabilities to make our lives much more convenient (in the ways you're referring with AI) for decades and we haven't done it! Reality is in the short term machines (and the AI to go with it if needed) costs too much money in the short term, so governments, businesses and frankly individuals don't want to pay for it. Which is a shame :( @AuthorJMac I forget who said it, but I loved the phrasing: โWhy isnโt AI doing the tedious work for creative people, instead of the creative work for tedious people?โ  @AuthorJMac Additionally it can't be right that AI is writing something on prompts by Humans just that another AI is "reading" it and creates a summary for another human. Well, I did my best to keep up, but it's time to mute this thread. @AuthorJMac it's being pushed where it doesn't belong and it's all because of capitalism @AuthorJMac I don't actually think that this particular thing was anyone's fault really. It just happened to empirically turn out that it's easier to train AI to make superficially passable prose or an illustration than it is to build a robot that can (cheaply) fold laundry. Like, people are developing these kinds of robots that you ask for. But doing laundry is a lot harder than writing computer code is for example. |
@AuthorJMac yes! This!